Aleksey's Kingdom (A Royal Affair #2)(26)

We tethered the horses securely and made a small fire. It was actually very pleasant, if we did not have the earlier event to consider. Another few seconds… Faelan busy elsewhere…. I shuddered. I have seen fields covered in dead and dying horses and can hear their terrified screams in my mind if I ever wish to conjure that horrible sound. I could picture only too well what Xavier’s fate would have been had that arrow taken his eye and possibly passed beyond….

Aleksey leaned against me, arm around my waist. “I have decided to speak with the reverend and tell him what happened. He cannot actually say that his adopted son is a monster, but he might privately believe in Faelan’s innocence and support us should that be necessary. He was not vociferous in calling for Faelan’s demise tonight.”

“I thought I might speak to the mother.”

He let me go and sat straighter. “Really?”

I shrugged. “She cannot keep her eye on the boy all the time. She believes nothing can hurt him in this forest?” I chuckled. “She has mistaken me for a civilized man, and I thought I would disabuse her of that notion.”

He considered this for a while, then leaned against me once more, sharing body heat. “Nikolai, do you believe that women can sleep with the devil?”

My brows rose, but I suppose he could not see this. “I do not know. Even if they did, would that necessarily make the resulting child evil?”

“What on earth do you mean? Of course it would!”

“Why? Are all children of evil men malevolent in their turn? Are all children of saintly men good? If that were true, trust me, I would be a very, very godly man indeed, and I am not, as you know.”

“But you do believe in the devil? You say you do not believe in God, but you curse him roundly enough when you hit your thumb with a hammer.”

I thought back to my dream of the Black Crow and their bodies lying white upon blasted earth. Did I believe in such a wrathful entity? It seemed as though he did walk the earth sometimes. I shivered.

“Are you cold?” He slid his chilled hands into my trousers, and I told him he had it the wrong way around and plunged my frozen ones into his, and we wrestled for a while, which was delightful and warmed us both up. It is interesting both being men in this activity, for I am sure a great deal more negotiation and argument and decision making and promises made and broken goes on between two men than it does between a man and a woman, for is it not obvious how their joining will be? It is not so for men, and it was always diverting for us to decide who was going to have the privilege of entering whom, or just go first. I particularly enjoyed it, for being bigger and stronger, I usually won. I soon had him beneath me, his breeches down, framing his firm globes in the moonlight, my hands upon him, stretching him open with just the tip of my cock engaged.

“Niko….”

God’s teeth! “What?”

“I have been thinking. Are you listening?”

“I can only use one organ at a time.”

“Huh. Anyway, as I was saying, I have been thinking about us—well, not us, as in you and me specifically, but us as in men like us. Do you think there are many sodomites in the world?”

“What?”

“Men who like other men? Do you think—”

“I think there are two here! Shut up! Come back! Yes! I think there are lots of us! Lie there.”

“Well, exactly, that is what I thought. So what is a colony? That’s the next question that immediately follows, is it not? Niko? Isn’t it?”

“Ugh.”

“Well, I will tell you what it is, for you are busy. It’s a group of men who come together so they can live how they wish to live. And if there are enough men like them, then they can thrive, and none can say nay to their enterprise. Some of the colonies here in the New World do not prosper, but it is not because of their very odd ideas about God—ranting, shaking, hopping, I shouldn’t wonder—it’s because there are not enough of them. Don’t stop. I like that. So, and this is the important part that you do need to listen to, by the way—what if we filled our kingdom with other men such as us? There could be hundreds of cabins upon our land, for we have so much of it. We could then—”

“Aleksey, have you seriously just suggested I live amongst hundreds of men who would make it their only aim of every day to catch a glimpse of you? Speak with you? Smile at you? Because—”

“Why would they do any of that?”

“Because they would be men like me!”

“Ah. Like you…. But then if they liked me and wanted to have me, they would ignore me, avoid me, be angry with me all the time, argue with me, censure me, and then when I tried to kiss them, they would turn on me and batter me to the ground.”

“Do not forget the attempt to force you—you always like reminding me about that.”

“Yes. Thank you. And then attempt to force me, whilst muttering and cursing about stirring a man and teasing him, and thus being battered and forced upon the ground would be turned to my fault. I do like that bit, thank you. Do not stop, I said. So you have nothing to worry about; I would not be won over by their behavior.”

“What about me?”

“Huh?”

“Well, if they were men like us—like you—then they would come into our cabin half-dressed, rubbing their hands across their hard bellies as if merely yawning or stretching. They would find every excuse to come at just the right time to watch me dressing or shaving, eating my body with their eyes—”